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The good old days


Barry

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If your car needed an oil change, you jacked it up outside your house, drained the oil, screwed the old filter off, screwed the new one on and filled the engine with oil. 

If the car was running bad, you change the spark plugs, get the timing light out and make sure the distributor is on point. 

If you’re having starting problems, you make sure the points are set correctly. 

Making an engine run is easy. Every petrol engine needs 4 things to run. Spark, timing, fuel, compression. 

When did we reach the stage that people lost all knowledge and started to depend on overpriced dealerships?

I know so many people who call themselves petrol heads but they couldn’t even point out a spark plug. 

Where did it all go wrong?

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6 minutes ago, Barry said:

If your car needed an oil change, you jacked it up outside your house, drained the oil, screwed the old filter off, screwed the new one on and filled the engine with oil. 

If the car was running bad, you change the spark plugs, get the timing light out and make sure the distributor is on point. 

If you’re having starting problems, you make sure the points are set correctly. 

Making an engine run is easy. Every petrol engine needs 4 things to run. Spark, timing, fuel, compression. 

When did we reach the stage that people lost all knowledge and started to depend on overpriced dealerships?

I know so many people who call themselves petrol heads but they couldn’t even point out a spark plug. 

Where did it all go wrong?

Good topic Barry. I think many of our generation grew up on the street messing with scooters, bikes, motorcycles because there was nothing else to do to spent those long summers. Video games were coming up but watching 2 pixels going left to right wasn’t that much interesting.

younger generation people now grow up with internet and a massive amount of information at their fingertips but I think it makes them less focused and they can’t decide if they want to be the next youtuber, DJ,  Pro-Gamer, or anything else. 

I am sure there are still so many young people who are genuinely interested in technology although we might get the impression that this is not the case. 

 

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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What went wrong is that engines in the good old days were dirty, and terribly inefficient. Modern engines, and the technologies that make them cleaner and more efficient are the result of that. 

In fact, you could say that it all started going wrong when the first internal combustion engines were put into large scale production.  

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Good topic @Barry, what I personally feel is the use of new technology introduce a lot of electronics and computer management stuff in cars that started scaring petrolhead to mess with their car due to lack of knowledge and confidence. This started a trend to depend on the qualified mechanic or dealership, both are expensive and hence owners got more scared and moved away from the basic maintenance or quick fix that we use to do back in old days when cars were more simple to work than waiting for the binary command of 1's and 0'S.

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Let's root for each other & watch each other grow.

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Well depends on what your definition of the good old days is? Do you like the ability to dismantle and then reassemble an entire car with a 10mm spanner and a flat screw driver but then ride in a donkey cart with leaf spring suspension, moody carb that wont start on cold mornings and when it does start only a few people can actually make it work right so its not running too rich or too lean and when its working you are getting horrible gas mileage due to its inefficient design or having the stopping distance of a ocean liner with those horrible drum brakes or having massive 8 liter V8 engines that only produce 130hp and struggle to even pull themselves up a hill.   
Sorry I think, I'll give those old days a miss! In this country is a different situation. Majority of the people live in apartments and have no place to work on their cars, second of all its too hot most times of the years to be out for more than 10 minutes and that pace of life is very busy here, most people leave for work early in the morning and don't return until late in the day and whatever free time they do have they would rather spend with family, friends or doing something they love rather than wrenching on their cars out on a busy street side out in the sun.  

 

2 hours ago, Gaurav said:

Good topic @Barry, what I personally feel is the use of new technology introduce a lot of electronics and computer management stuff in cars that started scaring petrolhead to mess with their car due to lack of knowledge and confidence. This started a trend to depend on the qualified mechanic or dealership, both are expensive and hence owners got more scared and moved away from the basic maintenance or quick fix that we use to do back in old days when cars were more simple to work than waiting for the binary command of 1's and 0'S.


Not anymore in fact more people getting into DIY because of it. Now even manufacturer specific diagnostic scanners are very affordable and anyone can plug one in and give it a go. I rather not get too oily and undo two nuts and swap out a specific coil pack or CKP sensor without any guesswork which my scanner told were busted then having to fiddle with a distributor and a timing strobe light that is after I have spent hours trying to pinpoint the issue in the first place. 



 

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